Cash For Comments

News.com, presumably because of a lack of real news to copy and paste, has reduced itself to relaying a scare campaign from the dinosaur full-service air travel industry, and dressing it up as real news.

TRAVELLERS flying on budget airlines are being warned that they may end up paying more than if they’d chosen a full-service airline.

The increasing number of extra charges airlines being introduced by some airlines can easily triple the cost of a budget ticket, an analysis of the nation’s budget carriers by Flight Centre has found.

This is of course rubbish. Full-service airlines like the Qantas – the shame of Australia – pay commission to travel agents like flight centre to say things like this to customers. Presumably now they are also paying money to news.com to say the same thing.

Of course travel agents would warn against using low-cost carriers, since a large part of why LCCs are so much cheaper is that they completely cut travel agents out of the air travel industry. Airlines like Air Asia even sell their own accommodation packages with their flights, something which is rapidly in the process of sending businesses like Flight Centre bankrupt.

Well of course the 3x thing is possibly true. E.g. the cost of a flight from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur with either Tiger or Air Asia is around $1. So yes it’s possible that a $15 baggage charge would increase it by SIXTEEN TIMES.

It is still however about $300 cheaper than what Qantas will fly you there for, so whatever.

very funny post but contains the facts, I wonder why travel agents use such terms and charges extra and when it comes to the issuance of a ticket they tell you to pay more if there was a slight delay in confirming tickets.travel agents performing such acts should never be contacted again, there are some UK based travel agencies who are well known for fair dealing …you can always search for recommendations and word of mouth for finding right travel agents

Yeah, I think the cost of these flight may not be able to be compared generally, and should be looked at on a case to case basis. Either way, you shouldn’t have to file banruptcy after purchasing a plane ticket, full-service or not!